A former Goldman Sachs banker who secretly spent thousands from his marital joint account on his mistress has been ordered to forfeit £4 million after losing a divorce battle with his wealthy ex-wife.
Ardal Loh-Gronager, 35, married businesswoman and heiress Wei-Lyn Loh, 43, in 2019 after leaving his job to support her and oversee the renovation of their mansion on Avenue Road in Primrose Hill, London – one of the UK's most expensive streets. The couple separated in 2023 after it emerged that Loh-Gronager had conducted an 'expensively financed relationship' parallel to his marriage, paying his mistress from their joint account, often disguising the payments as 'flowers', and allowing her to use his £200,000 Bentley, a pre-wedding gift from his wife.
Under a prenuptial agreement, Loh-Gronager was initially set to receive £6,449,802 after the split. However, his ex-wife, a successful businesswoman and beneficiary of a family trust, took him to court, alleging he had already received about £4 million by using joint account funds for his investments and transferring money from her account to his. The court also heard that Loh-Gronager had sought to 'undermine, harass and unsettle' his ex by hiring a private investigator to pose as a journalist outside her home and creating a private Instagram account to publish photos of her.
Following a trial at the High Court, Mr Justice Cusworth ruled that Loh-Gronager's payout should be reduced by approximately £4 million to £2,369,385, taking into account the sums he had already received and his conduct, including 'doctoring' emails to support his case. The judge stated that Loh-Gronager had made regular payments from the joint account to his girlfriend and had transferred £1 million from his wife's account on the day she was undergoing therapy shortly before their relationship ended.
The judge noted: 'The fact that the husband began to take amounts from the joint account almost as soon as it was set up suggests that he has throughout the marriage been preparing the ground for as lucrative a separation as he could contrive.' He added that Loh-Gronager had 'callously and quite deliberately sought to cause upset to the wife in the hope that she would be persuaded to drop the case'. The couple had begun living together in 2015 and married in 2019, with Loh-Gronager quitting his job at Credit Suisse to oversee the mansion refurbishment. While he had been successful, his wife was 'enormously wealthy', with most of her assets tied up in business and a family trust.
